It would be pretty awesome if we all had plenty of mental energy to stay motivated and disciplined all day long, to be highly productive and highly creative whenever we needed, and to always feel vibrant and optimistic about the future.

However, the more you try to control elements of your life – whether it is to improve your health, wealth, social life or whatever – the more apparent it is how finite and scarce this “mental energy” can be.

In particular, it seems that whenever we use willpower – in any form and for any reason – we are using up resources from this pool of mental energy, much faster than the pool is replenished.

Psychologists have also shown[1] that decisions on matters that affect us can deplete the same mental resource as willpower. In some sense, these decisions and willpower are the same:

it requires willpower to consciously focus our attention on different complex options and their shortcomings in order to make a decision.

when we use willpower, we are making a decision whether to override whatever action wewould otherwise have taken.

Below are some of my concrete suggestions for keeping one’s mental energy high, and I’m interested to hear more ideas from other readers – so please tell us: what tricks do you know for maximising your mental energy?

Build habits and routines: this reduces the number of superfluous decisions that you need to make on a daily basis, especially involving recurring temptations.

Avoid temptation in the first place: for example, when I buy food, I intentionally buy only healthy items. Then later at home, I never have to use any willpower to convince myself not to eat unhealthy food, as all the choices are healthy.

Make unimportant decisions quickly: a decision that is thought about for a long time is likely to be slightly more accurate than the same decision made quickly, although vastly more expensive for the mind. So trivial decisions, such as which colour shirt to wear [like Obama: 2], or which dish to order from a menu, are best made quickly even if this risks overlooking a slightly better alternative.

Get out of bed soon after waking up: this helps for two reasons. Firstly, it teaches your body to transition properly from “asleep” to “awake”, and I’ve found this gives you better quality of sleep and better wakefulness during the day. Secondly, if you have a tendency to laze around for a long time after waking up, then every morning you’re losing the fight against the temptation to stay in bed several times before getting up, throwing mental energy down the drain before your feet have even touched the floor!

Focus on one complicated task at a time: I used to improvise on the piano during breaks from work, until eventually, I realised how expensive it was to switch back to “proper” work afterwards! Every time I switched from playing the piano to whatever work I was supposed to be doing, my mind would still be naturally trying to think about piano, and so it required mental effort to refocus on the new task.

Keep your blood sugar moderately high: Psychologists have done many experiments on the effect of sugar on willpower depletion, and the results are conclusive: people have more willpower when they have been given sugar. The reasoning is simple: the only fuel that the brain can use is glucose, so if your blood sugar is low, then your mind can’t do its job properly. When I feel my mental energy waning, I often take a glucose tablet to revert my blood sugar to “enough” (followed by a drink of water to avoid tooth decay!)

Avoid sugar crashes: conversely, if your blood sugar is too high, then it will soon be enthusiastically removed to be stored for times of famine, leaving your mind with too little again.

Avoid food that’s difficult to digest: after eating heavy, carbohydrate-rich foods, your body makes its digestive system a priority, so the brain doesn’t get as much glucose as it deserves.

Keep active as you work: even light physical activity such as walking around will keep your blood flowing well, supplying your mind with a steady stream of fuel.

Spend time only on activities that deserve your mental energy

Sleep at the same time every night: The best way to replenish mental energy reserves is by sleeping well, and sleeping at the same time is an effective way to sleep better.

Work with the right amount of background noise/music: For some activities, I prefer to work in silence. For example if I’m doing a maths exam paper, any music and any sounds distract me and I would have to expend effort focusing away from them. Other times, if the work is less demanding then my mind will wander, and I have to expend effort focusing back to the work. Then, music or background noise can be useful as it’s the first thing my mind will wander to, so it won’t wander far! For me, metal and foreign pop music are the easiest genres to work along to, but Classical distracts me too much so I avoid it. For you, it may work completely differently, so it’s worth experimenting with.

Write down information to free your short-term memory: This is just one reason why to-do lists are so powerful – they save our minds from spending their energy on making sure we remember to do everything.

Take “real” breaks: especially those which require no conscious decisions – long showers and team sports work well for me.

For difficult decisions, write down a short list of options and work from that: this allows the mind to focus quickly on choosing the best option rather than holding various options its memory.

Make travelling less effortful: I used to wonder why travelling would make me so tired – after all, most of the time is spent just sitting around on a train or at an airport! However, the whole time our minds are on alert, checking whether we have all our belongings, whether we’re on the correct platform, whether we’re running late etc. A little planning well before the journey can help here.

Be a little more extroverted: one difference between extroverts and introverts is that introverts typically monitor details of their social interaction much more than extroverts do[3]. As a result, extroverts can survive and enjoy social activity for much longer before their mental energy starts running dry. Mentally switching off some of the superfluous self-monitoring saves you energy for later.

Be less perfectionist: similarly, perfectionists can encounter decision fatigue from aggressive monitoring oftheir work. (Of course, there are both benefits and drawbacks to being perfectionist!)

Work and live in a comfortable environment: otherwise you’ll often have to distract yourself from these discomforts to concentrate on anything else.

Choose to spend more time on activities that absorb your attention: in other words, seek flow[4] activities.

So how about you? Suggestions about meditation or sport or travelling would be particularly useful, as I haven’t covered them much here!

sir you will find it a coincidenceAll the things or activities mentioned above are already practised by me ...and the thing is that i read it nowhere but invented it myself !!!And i am sad that still there is a lot to improve :(

As you may have discovered after writing this post, our brain doesn't run only on glucose. It can run on ketone bodies, and some say it actually prefers them. Other cells in our bodies can use ketones or fatty acids, in addition to glucose.

Coconut oil is good for providing ketones, and it's said to make transitioning to burning fat as primary fuel easier because medium-chain triglycerides in which coconut oil is very rich are easy to burn.

Ugh, i need to do work on this. I've been setting goals and meeting a lot of them this week. I've been more disciplined then I have in awhile, but it was exhausting keeping myself away from my old automatic and unproductive habits. i was productive today so I know I am slowly developing good habits, but I also caved in the evening and zoned out to a magazine, 15 minutes of a movie, and a bit (but way less then usual) of surfing the net. I don't know, a part of me thinks I needed it. Pushing myself mentally really does feel like a physical thing....and I am slowly building muscle.

We do really have to enhance our mental energy but sometimes it doesn't work in some manners.Did you know that the joblessness rate increased a point despite more jobs being produced than economists predicted. Resource for this article:Financial Advice

Personally I have tried loads of "diets" and have lost 4.5 st on no carb. I put the weight back on as many people I know did. I also lost a lot of lean muscle which really affects my metabolism now and muscle endurance.

Interesting - do you have any experience with this? I've read a little about it since you posted and it seems to be essentially a treatment for epilepsy that has many unfavourable side-effects. Being an extreme low-carb diet I'm sure it could also be used for weight loss if managed correctly, but I've found nothing advocating it for the rest of the population.

I have been on an extreme low carb diet for about 2 months now. I've never used ketostix or any of that so I don't know if I'm in ketogenesis but I've modelled my diet after Dr. Rosedale's diet and the bulletproof diet kinda amalgamated into one + convenience with my own special touches.

A month+ into it when I started exercising again I felt like I was 'regenerating' much faster than I ever did on sugar and my energy is more sustained. Sure I hit fatigue with doing exercises but I find after resting for 10 seconds I can do another smaller set (whereas before under sugar it'd be 30 secs --> minute --> and hell sometimes never regenerating again for a few hours).

People have told me I lost slimmer but that may be water weight and I'm not into vanity more how great it makes me feel. They all say the mind runs solely on glucose but I don't think this is true. My mind feels sharp and alert much more than usual on practically no carb. Going low carb won't turn you into a total god but it optimizes so much of your bodily processes that it is hard to believe at times. When I switch to a sugar meal if it's enough of a glycemic load I get very nauseous afterwards. Thus I've broken my addiction to french fries and huge carb treats as I now have a negative correlative feeling to go with them.

I really think no carb is the way to go if you have metabolic issues like me (I've suspected I've been becoming pre-diabetic and had metabolic syndrome for 9 years now lol). Don't end the induction phase as carbs are in everything these days - it is hard to avoid carbs anywhere. If you eat out it'll be in your soups/gravies/served as sides etc... It's in condiments like ketchup in massive amounts. I dope carb if I feel like I'm going low sugar but maybe 1-3g at most (a small bite of bread or a nibble of a cookie etc). If you can upkeep this discipline for about a month your body fully adjusts into a sort of cool 'running on empty' mode where you're having no carbs but yet your energy levels are good. Dr. Rosedale likens this to training the metabolism to use the bodies preferred fuel - fat/ketones/glucose broken from fat whatever it is.

random unrelated stuff about low carb below:

For meals I'll have a microwaved sausage and 4 overeasy eggs (love the
yolks), or order a carne asada quesadilla with tons of cheese and not
eat the shell as much as possible. Burgers without buns the whole cliche
deal. When I'm trying to optimize to the proper fat ratio I'll pour
Trader Joe's hollendaise sauce, Kerrygold grass fed butter, or raw
butter on whatever I'm eating. I also have a lot of Walnuts - totally
not fat-o-phobic (though you need to release your belief in the
diet-heart hypothesis to reach this level of 'no fear of fat')

I
have cheat days since it's too oddly antisocial to not eat whatever
everyone else is eating if eating out but otherwise I've noticed a huge
difference with how I feel. I started this diet because metabolic
syndrome/chronic fatigue were creeping up on me - I felt tired ALL the
time - a kind of 'don't feel like doing anything passionless' tired at
best and a 'sleepy' tired at worst. It took about a week for me to
adjust but suddenly all that brain fogginess disappeared. I played at a
Magic the Gathering prerelease for fun about 2 weeks after converting
cold turkey and I felt my mind just running so much faster - the feeling
you get after intense exercise of mind clarity and feel-goodness. I
lost games as usual but I felt so much more on the ball than last time I
tried.

I empathise very much with much of what you say there! I used to subsist on a rather unhealthy carb-heavy diet, eating my third bowl of sugary cereal at 1am, that kind of thing. It took me a while to realise that this was the major cause of sometimes feeling totally without energy; I was spending lots of my time in sugar crashes! I used to take naps while doing (academic) work, thinking that it simply improved my concentration, but it was simply recovering from a drop in sugar. I remember exercising with a friend at university, and remarked that I could genuinely have just gone to sleep in the middle of the field right after running a mile.

Now, I've tried having varying levels of carbs in what I eat, and found out several things:

For the best in health, energy, taste and flexibility/convenience, I've found a low-carb diet with occasional sugar in small portions any time I feel I could use it

I feel so much better when I'm running on a low-carb diet - you describe it as "clean energy", and that is really the best way I've found of explaining it!

If I have too little carbs, then I find myself completely run out of energy. This might be be different if I had adjusted to it more.

Non-sugary food suddenly tastes much sweeter, plus I crave vegetables much more often than anything else.

I stay full longer and need to eat more - I'm super thin so I eat extra nuts, cheese etc. to make sure I don't sustain a calorie deficit (super tasty, so definitely not complaining there :p) but still ended up losing weight

Sugar crashes just don't happen

The energy dip after lunch/dinner is mostly caused by heavy carbohydrates such as rice so I consider them especially worth avoiding.

It's harder to get started exercising on a low-carb diet, so I tend to take something sugary before doing any exercise. After that, the low-carb background diet probably helps you keep going for longer as the body is (perhaps?) more efficient at flooding your body with whatever energy your muscles need. I've read studies advocating having a complete carb-fast before a workout, but that was on the bodybuilding.com forums aimed at people whose aim is to have basically no body fat and huge muscles, rather than people who want a fun game of football

I might try experimenting again with loweing carbs, certainly at "unnecessary" times, as I've been lax about it lately...

Also after Random's comment I looked again at the definition of "ketogenic diet" and it's less extreme than I had first understood - it seems that "ketogenis" is essentially "being able to burn fat properly", which is something I can certainly get behind!

I noticed you wrote that consuming too little carbs makes you run out of energy, and this made me think of "The Perfect Health Diet" (perfecthealthdiet.com). Its author, Paul Jaminet, insists on consuming about 20 - 30% of daily calories as carbs (glucose, specifically). His argument is that glucose is used by our bodies for structural purposes, not just for fuel. So, he suggests consuming enough glucose for building our molecules and staying in the fat burning mode.

On exercise - With a low carb diet you regenerate faster as I mentioned but you have less distance and less burst compared to a working glycotic person. If you are into competitive sports or anything it may be advantageous to have carbs as they seem harmless if you can burn them in totality. For someone like me though who just sits at a desk for work then goes home and sits at another desk to play computer games carbs just don't fit as I won't burn them. In my opinion the loss of distance/burst with low carb exercise is worth it as in most cases people who have metabolism problems to start with are not utilizing carbs correctly (as Dr. Rosedale describes they are rocket fuel - short intense burst only.). I find the distance/burst slowly is getting better over time while maintaining the low carb diet so I'm sticking to it. If I'm feeling a bit non-energetic due to not having enough fat earlier in the day I will dope a little carb like 5-10g or so before going to work out just so that I can actually exercise with sufficient intensity.

On ketosis - Ketosis is a concern if you are full blown diabetic with insulin release/response issues as from what I've read insulin also regulates the rate of ketosis. If someone's insulin is not working right the rate of ketosis will spiral out of control leading to ketoacidosis - I think the overproduction of acid due to performing ketosis too rapidly. So it seems that instant weight loss with ketosis is indeed a myth because your body will still regulate how much fat you can burn over time. If insulin is working properly your body will dip into ketosis without carbs but not to the point in which it will endanger you. This is all what I've read anyway and is not official medical advice - just experiential. This is my 2 and a half't month since quitting carbs cold turkey and at around an estimate intake of 20g of carbs per day from doping (skimming burger buns with meat drippings on em, inescapable carbs from some foods/soups, 4 or 5 dark chocolate baking chips for dessert etc...) with exercise 1 hour twice a week I feel good.

Beware rabbit starvation - Around 30 days after starting my no carb regiment I suddenly hit a wall. I felt tired all the time and weak and dizzy. I thought this was due to no electrolytes so I started carrying electrolyte solutions and pink salt with me whenever I went and increased my fluid intake while taking electrolytes. Helped a little but not much. I researched more of this 'hitting the wall' and I found out I was NOT getting enough fat in my diet!

When you go no carb you just can't go 80% protein and 20% fat like is present in most dishes served in the US due to fatophobia. The ratio needs to be around the bulletproof suggested ratios of 60% fat 20% protein 20% carb. Without the presence of carbs the body goes into ketosis. Without the presence of fat in the diet either though ketosis may not be enough so your body will start breaking down protein into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis I think (glucose new creation).

Gluconeogenesis is very stressful on the body I read. Your breath will become really stinky as your body exerts itself to create energy out of protein which is unnatural for it. Someone linked an article to rabbit starvation and this is exactly what I was feeling. When you get more fat in your diet all those symptoms I described earlier went away and my breath became bearable again. On real fat burning ketosis your breath shouldn't smell like an oil refinery. It will take on a more neutral smell and from what I read on forums a 'sweet' smell on heavy ketosis.

Didn't mean to mix up those two hopefully it wasn't written that way. I am aware that those 2 are separate conditions but I do believe trying low carb in someone with severe insulin control issues (diabetics namely) may make them ketoacidic. This article goes more into this:

According to their view ketosis IS dangerous in someone with no insulin because the feedback loop that regulates the production of ketones in regular ketosis goes unchecked. With that they claim with even small amounts of insulin there would be enough of a feedback loop to stop regular ketosis from becoming ketoacidosis.

It's important to distinguish type 1 diabetes from type 2 diabetes. All of the material (including pieces about clinical experiments) about ketogenic diets I've come across were about people who had insulin (with type 2 diabetes or less sick). People with type 2 diabetes have too much insulin.

Makes sense which puzzles me to why our medical establishment treats Type 2 diabetes with the injection of even more insulin into an already insulin resistant state. In that case Type 1's would be the only ones who'd have to worry about ketoacidosis.

I've noticed that my cognitive energy is higher and I can work longer on cognitive tasks like programming when I am in ketosis. I also notice I get a day of brain fog when transitioning from non-ketosis to ketosis.

I don't think is controversial - aren't there many anecdotal reports of this? Probably even studies. I would look at pubmed and r/keto for validation.

Alan Mayer is a veteran salesman and sales trainer. With over two decades of experience, he's able to deliver results quickly and has powerful mental models for understanding sales. Most interestingly, he now has a speciality in how introverts can leverage their natural skills to even be better salespeople than extroverts!

He's running a class for GiveGetWin on November 28th on how to create instant rapport by matching your language to the prospective client or customer. Extremely powerful stuff. Enjoy this interview, and then get over to GiveGetWin to scoop this deal up if your job or role involves any selling or interpersonal skills.

"The New Rules For Sales" -- When Features and Benefits Don't Get It Done

Sales wisdom from Alan Mayer, as told to Chiara Cokieng

I am a sales trainer. But first and foremost, I'm the person in sales for over 20 years now. I started very young during university selling bulldozers and excavators -- heavy equipment. My whole career, I leaned towards sales.